Use the 2.0 shaders since the ARB shaders are getting quite old. So long as your hardware supports it, I think the 2.0 shaders are worth learning more than some desperate attempt to support old/legacy hardware with people who might play the game. Additionally, there are newer shader versions than the one for OpenGL 2.0 but they only differ in the syntax of the GLSL code, all of the OpenGL glue is the same for 2.0 and up. The ARB shaders have very different glue, and I believe the language is closer to assembly, which just isn't fun to work with.

I agree with lhkbob, ARB shaders are very difficult to use, very low-level and that is not worth the effort except if lots of people using your game own such an hardware. Personally I prefer not using shaders on graphics cards that supports only ARB shaders.

I think here is a small misunderstanding. There are legacy ARB shaders with low level (assembly) code, but in this thread it's only about if one should use GLSL shaders via the ARB or the 2.0 functions. Since both are more or less the same with the only difference being a ARB prefix or suffix, it only is a matter of which OpenGL-Version you want to support.

I would go with the 2.0 stuff (drivers should be there by now). Simple leave out ARB suffixes and prefixes in the examples you find and you should be fine...

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